Number of CS grads etc

Coding camps are shutting down everywhere recently. I don’t get the feeling many employers want to employ most camp graduates who dont have related experience or another degree.

It’s true that a lot of coding camps are shutting down. But that does not mean that there aren’t coding jobs. I think that it is a reflection that a lot of people saw this (starting a coding camp) as a way to get rich quick. A lot of people started up boot camps and it was more than the market could support. Personally, I’m always a little suspicious of for profit education. They have a long reputation of making unsupported claims of efficacy and false employment rate claims.

Decades ago I worked in high tech. We had a lot of guys coming in from 2-year tech companies that couldn’t bias a transistor. Eventually the managers grew wary of hiring these guys. I got a better EE education in my two years at a community college than most of these guys got by spending 5 times as much money. Granted there were a few of these guys that were quite good, but they were the kind of guys that would have excelled anywhere.

I look at coding camps the same way. They are diploma mills. Now, some guys learn a lot, but they are the guys that would have done well anyway. The main advantage (at least from a few friends that have done it) are the connections. But of course, we can get those for free at hack-a-thons and meetups. I think coding bootcamps were trendy for a while and it seemed like a gold rush so everyone piled on. Now people are wondering if it is really worth $15k so the market is glutted with coding camps that people don’t want. But that is not a reflection on whether or not the jobs are there, just that coding bootcamps aren’t always the best path, especially when they cost $15k. And people are realizing that just going to a coding bootcamp is no guarantee of a job.

There are a lot of jobs going unfilled. But remember that many jobs have very specific requirements. They may have very specific languages and technologies that you need. If they want Ruby, C#, SQL, and Angular2 - then your MERN stack may not impress them. It’s not enough to say, “If there are so many unfilled jobs then why are there so many coders unemployed?” Do they have the right skills? Are they in the right city?

Do you need a college degree? For some things no, for some things yes. It depends on the job.

And yes, there are jobs out there where you do not need a CS degree but they want one anyway. Maybe it is company policy. Maybe the owner is an MBA and he can’t conceive that anyone without a degree can do the job. Or maybe the tech people at the company know what is involved and would rather work with someone that has a well rounded background. A CS degree is no guarantee, but neither is a neat portfolio. Sure, the applicant has a nice portfolio, but how much of it is cut and pasted? It may show that the coder can do some basic things, but is there a breadth of knowledge there? Maybe the company would rather just start with a CS degree as a baseline.

And then there are probably some guys that are anti-degree. I’ve heard a few startup guys that don’t want degrees, they want people that taught themselves. But a few people saying that is not the same as an industry wide movement. As the old saying goes, “The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’.”

There is a tendency to lump all “coding” jobs together. Some coding jobs will do much better with a degree, as shown here. And the same survey shows that while college work is helpful, bootcamps do pretty well too. But some kind of formal education does better than self-taught. And that doesn’t include all the self-taught people that didn’t make it to the survey because the dropped out - this survey isn’t a true random sample of people that tried to make it in the coding world because it is self-selective of people that succeeded. It also doesn’t mention the type of job. True, maybe that self-taught guy is making bank right now as a self-employed guy in the gig economy, but the guy with a Master’s in CS has a very secure job in a large company, with stock options, paid medical, paid vacation, and a retirement plan. The data doesn’t tell us.

But in general, having a degree increases salaries and job security. That’s basic math. But also, people that work hard can make it too.

Without a CS degree, there will be jobs that you cannot get. But remember, you don’t need to qualify for every job. You just need to qualify for and land a job.

Learn everything you can. Code every day. Never give up.

I just wish there was a way to get accurate numbers. I do not believe Obamas that there are a million STEM jobs that are not being filled and that there will be a million more.

I have googled and cannot find the numbers: how many webdev jobs, how many more there will be, how many IT jobs in total, how much that will increase, how many CS grads, how many code camp grads, what % of code camp grads get jobs. Does FCC keep track of what % of their grads get jobs?

It is annoying that with all the info sources we have we cannot get accurate numbers.And again that myth that a college degree will get you a million over a life time keeps floating over the internet. Also the one that the USA is so far behind other countries in math etc. Big Ed puts out a lot of phony numbers to keep the demand for a college degree high and keep the price up and keep more young people in high student debt.

I read that student debt is approaching 1 trillion. Also read that it is a bubble. Too many employers have been burned by hiring people with degrees and certs who cannot do even the basics of a job and that is why they demand experience instead of those.

You have made it clear that you do not believe the statistics that you say you find online. Now that the conversation is becoming repetitive and unproductive, I am going to lock it to preserve everyone’s thoughtful comments before it gets too off topic.

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